‘The Pursuit of God’ by A. W. Tozer

A. W. Tozer was a preacher of the last century ministering in a rough area of Chicago, and was often refered to as a 20th century prophet (prophet in the proclaimation of God’s Word sense, not foreseeing the future sense).  As a young Christian this book had a tremendous impact on me.  Over the years I’ve heard numerous Christians say the same thing.  It’s a powerful little book.

Lyle Dorsett has recently released a biography of A. W. Tozer.  In this book is this account of Tozer’s writing of ‘The Pursuit of God’.

He was invited to speak at McAllen, Texas, and he thought on the long ride down there that he would write on this book. He boarded the train—the old Pullman train—at LaSalle Street Station in Chicago—the days when you would pull the curtain on the roomette and he would be all alone. Well he asked for a little writing table which the porter brought him and he started to write. Along about nine o’clock the porter knocked on the side of the door and said, “Friend, this is the last call for dinner—would you want something to eat?” And he said, “Bring me some toast and some tea” which he did. [Tozer] kept on writing, all night long, this thing coming as fast to his heart as he could write, and when they pulled into the station, about 7:30 the next morning, at McAllen, Texas, that book was finished and all he had in front of him was just the Bible.

Dorsett continues:

The Pursuit of God is one of the most striking manifestations of the truth that if a man will concern himself with the depth of his ministry, the Holy Spirit will take care of the breadth. Zwemer was correct about the book’s origin. This powerful little book that has had such a profound impact on the souls of hungry Christians who crave a deeper knowledge of God was impregnated and nurtured in Tozers soul. And the gestation happened in long hours of adoration and awe of God.

This is an excellent book by a man who lived exactly what he preached to others.  You can order this book from Amazon.ca.

 

Audio page now operational

The audio page of the Renaissance Church website is now up and running.  We hope to be able to upload Sunday’s message to the website very quickly.  Recently Gino has been able to convert, compress and upload by Sunday night. Thank you Gino!

Over the course of the Summer, we will slowly be adding older messages to our archive.  The future of the audio resouces will be much fuller.  Special series will have unique pages that not only link to the mp3 files, but will also contain links to relevant documents and books that are related to the series or message.

 

The Together for the Gospel conference

Andrew, Gary and I had planned to attend the Together for the Gospel conference in Louisville, Kentucky, this past April, to feed our souls from listening to godly men, and to spend time together praying over Renaissance and planning for the future.

It didn’t go off quite like we had hoped.  Gary had a conflict with the demands of his church planting schedule and had to bail out.  Andrew made it, but had to fly out on urgent business for Tecsys half way through.  Such are the challenges of a bi-vocational church leadership. Despite the setbacks, it was a refreshing time to be challenged, nourished, and renewed.

One of the high points for me was singing hymns with 5500 other men, most of whom were pastors, and you could tell that most sung in tune.  It was so moving I was in tears and unable to finish the first hymn — which is so unlike me to do something like that.

So what is Together for the Gospel, you ask?  It began as 4 friends, who are all pastors from different denominational lines, wanted to share their experience in being able to have unity in the faith defined by the gospel message, even though they may differ on secondary (yet very important) points such as baptism and ecclesiology. The conference, primarily targeted for pastors and church leaders that crosses denominational lines. 

The 4 men are Mark Dever (pastor of Captiol Hill Baptist Church, Washington D. C.), Ligon Duncan (pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, Mississippi), C. J. Mahaney (Sovereign Grace Ministries founder, which is a psuedo reformed-charismatic denomination of sorts), and Al Mohler (president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary).  Joining these men to speak were John Piper (Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis), R. C. Spoul (Ligonier Ministries), John MacArthur (Grace Community Church, Sun Valley, California, and Thabiti Anyabwile (pastor of First Baptist Church, Grand Cayman).

The subject of this years conference was to reaffirm what the gospel message is, and to look at how the gospel itself is under many subtle and not-so-subtle attacks from within the church.  The messages were phenomenal, and both Andrew and I have listened to the messages a second time on mp3 so that we can dig as much meat out of them as we can.

The messages are posted at the T4G website and you too can download and listen to them free of charge.  If you only listen to 3 messages, I would suggest listening to the messages by John MacArthur, R. C. Sproul and John Piper.

More reflections to come.

 

Memoirs of an Ordinary Quebec pastor

D. A. Carson is a well known, prolific evangelical author, who serves on the faculty of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.  He is considered by many to be one of the most sharp, and ablest minds in the church today.

Few people know his father, Tom Carson.  Tom was an ordinary pastor.  Yet, extraordinary in that he felt called to minister the gospel to the people of Quebec, where his life long ministry showed very little fruit, and a great deal of frustration. Yet he remained faithful to his calling.

This book is Tom’s story, with a soul-feeding narration by his son Don Carson.  The challenges of ministry in Quebec today have not changed since Tom pastored a church in Drummondville.  Indifference, apathy, and precious little response to the gospel is still the challenge we find in Montreal today.  I found this book to be very encouraging as we at Renaissance faced our recent 7000 flier mailout with seemingly little response in Kirkland. 

One story in this book stood out to me.  Don related how French-speaking missionaries in Africa fled a very volatile situation and sought other French-speaking ministry options while they waited out the tense political situation.  Many missionaries came to Quebec and served under the oversight of Tom Carson.  Not one lasted a month.  Don, as a Christian teenager, asked his father why they all had left.  Tom simply said, these missionaries were used to seeing much more fruit in their ministry than they saw here. And they incorrectly concluded that the reason they saw no fruit was because God had not called them to Quebec.  They couldn’t concieve of the reality of the difficulty of ministry in Quebec.

This is a wonderful book that will help build a proper context for the situation we face in Quebec as we at Renaissance try to reach the Quebec people with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Order at Amazon.ca >>>

 

Mackenzie’s Baptism

Some pictures  of Mackenzie Labrecque’s baptism on June 2.  Pastor Gary Smith performed the baptism.